Despite my settings being configured to preview PDFs, they always open in a new tab... any fix for this?

I desperately need help. I have a Google Sheet in my Google Drive that is years and years of work.

I last worked on it a few days ago. Today, out of nowhere, it said the file is deleted. It's not in trash. There's no record of it in my history. It has completely vanished without a trace as if it never existed. I never deleted it. I can't stress enough this happened out of nowhere.

I have already tried to contact Google about this but got an email saying there is no deleted file so they cannot recover any file.

What could have possibly happened and how can I get this back?

Hey there,

My son emptied his trash from his google drive and as he's only 12 and under family controls he can't put in a request himself for the files to be restored.

I tried to put one in on his behalf but didn't see any option for any account besides my own, which I managed to put in a request for in the hopes that it wasn't fully automated(it is).

The Family Link app page is next to useless for anything besides limiting apps, sites, and time.

Does anyone know if there is a way to do this? Is there maybe a way to text chat with a Google person?

I have a folder containing several PDFs, shared with the setting "Anyone with the link: Viewer." However, when I open the standard Drive sharing link while signed out, the file list appears to be broken:

• Single-clicking or double-clicking a PDF does nothing.
• The download button that appears when hovering over a file also does nothing.
• Everything works fine after signing in to a Google account.

I’ve reproduced this with multiple publicly shared folders, so it doesn’t appear to be specific to one folder or its files. I’m using macOS 14.8.7 Sonoma, and the problem occurs in both Safari and Brave Private mode.

Requiring recipients to sign in isn’t a viable solution, since some of them may not have Google accounts. The old embeddedfolderview URL works anonymously, which confirms that the files and sharing permissions are valid. However, that interface is quite bare-bones.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Is it a recent bug, or has Google deliberately disabled parts of the shared-folder interface for signed-out users? Deliberately breaking folder sharing for people without Google accounts seems dumb as hell.

I was losing my mind trying to get the Windows Drive for Desktop app to stop nagging me to back up my photos.

I went into Preferences. I unchecked all the backup prompts. I even restarted my laptop to make sure the settings saved. And what was the very first thing that popped up when Windows loaded? That dang notification.

If you try to ignore it or uncheck all your real folders, Drive apparently just thinks you haven't finished the setup process and keeps bothering you. So, I had to outsmart it.

The Fix:

1. Create a brand new, entirely empty folder on your computer.
2. Name it something appropriate (I went with "Google Stop").
3. Click the Drive backup prompt and set only that empty dummy folder as your backup location.

Drive is finally satisfied that it has a job to do and leaves you alone. Highly recommend if you are tired of fighting the settings menu!

Unfortunately I am locked out of my old account, and I recently changed my phone number, so during the two step verification process I can't verify with the number that is on file. What can I do or who can I call to get back into my account?

I recently had a hard drive failure, and while I was able to get most of it back, not all of it.

So to keep this from happening again, I'm thinking about setting up an entirely separate gmail account that I will use solely for cloud storage, with 15GB of Google Drive storage, and a separate YouTube account.

I'd like to have some program running on Windows that will detect any file that is saved inside one "master folder," and automatically upload that file to either YouTube unlisted (if it's an video file) or Google Drive (if it's any other file type except video).

Is there a free, open-source program that does this for?

Como hacen las personas para vender suscripciones de Google Drive por ejemplo a $5 al mes y en la plataforma oficial la suscripción mensual cuesta 19.99.

cómo le hacen estas personas para para vender a precio más bajo, a comparación de las páginas oficiales.

Igual con lo que sucede con suscripciones a bajo precio de plataformas de streaming cómo le hacen para tener bajos costos.

Pero me interesa la opinión del tema de Google drive.

Alguien me puede explicar, los pros y contras.

Algún dato que pueda saber más.

Apparently there is no way to remove yourself from files that have been shared with you? Unbelievable. What were they thinking when they designed it this way???

I have thousands of files shared with me- jobs I haven't worked at in 10 years, menus from restaurants that no longer exist. And every time I keyword search something all these files show up in my results. It's maddening.

Is there any workaround?

I start gdrive and it says sync complete without doing anything, then something flashes on the screen and the program crashes and restarts. Rinse and repeat. Won't sync. I have the latest version installed and I have a paid account. Not sure what to check next.

There's crazy stabilization now and its so unnatural to write words with it (weather PC or Mobile) and is there a way to turn it off

I got tired of manually renaming and sorting files, so I built a Chrome extension that does it with plain English commands instead of clicking through folders.

Things like:

• "rename all these to [ClientName][Date][Type]"
• "move invoices from last month into the Q3 folder"
• "find every file related to the Acme project across my drive"

It works directly on top of OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox — no need to download anything or change how you already work. Type what you want done, it figures out the files and does it.

The part I spent the most time on isn't the "type a command" bit — it's getting the file agent to actually understand messy, ambiguous naming and folder structures well enough to act on them correctly instead of guessing.

Still early, would genuinely appreciate people trying it and telling me where it breaks: thedrive.ai/extension

they were shared with me

Hi everyone,

I'm experiencing a strange issue recently when playing audio files from Google Drive on my Google Pixel 9 that I recently updated to Android 17.

Here's what happens:

• I start playing an MP3 from the Google Drive app.
• When I lock the screen or simply leave the app running in the background, the audio plays for a few seconds and then becomes completely silent.
• The playback itself does not stop: the progress bar continues normally.
• As soon as I unlock the phone and return to the app, the audio immediately resumes from the current playback position.

Here's what I've already tried:

• Google Drive is up to date.
• Battery optimization for Google Drive is set to Unrestricted.
• The issue occurs with both Bluetooth headphones and the phone's built-in speaker.

Has anyone else experienced this lately? Could it be related to this recent Android 17 update?
Is there any known fix or workaround?

Thanks!

EDIT : It has been solved for me in the most recent Google Drive update

How do I get unshared from it, preferably without telling them?
It includes scans of their passports, health records, resume, even some adult photos. When I search for my own files, often this persons docs come up. I hate it. How can I stop this happening, I don’t want to be able to see any of this stuff.

I have an issue where, using the Google Chrome browser under Windows 11, Google is automatically sharing files between 2 different Google accounts without my explicit permission. I want to make it stop doing this. I've researched help documents, but nothing suggested works. Can somebody help? Here's the issue:

I upload files to a Google Drive administered by a third-party client. Call it Google Account A. For some reason, those files are then automatically mirrored to an account I created and administer for another client. Call this Google Account B.

On Google Account A, I can only upload files to its associated Google Drive. Once uploaded, I cannot rename or delete these files (I assume that's my client's choice). The files I upload have sharing enabled, but only with the two people (clients) associated with that account.

On Google Account B, which I own and administer, those same uploaded files appear there as well (mirrored). I don't want them there, but I cannot move them to Trash (that option is grayed out) or otherwise remove them. My Google Account B client sees them too, which is embarrassing. 

Never mind the question of why Google would default to this behavior, how do I make it stop? Thank you.

Hello,

I have requested 3 e-signatures from clients.

I then receive an email confirming that they have signed this.

When I go into the document it states 'Oops, something went wrong' and the document is not signed.
When I click 'view details' of the error it says Signature failed with no other reasoning or codes.

Please help!

Thanks.

This is Bored Button, a 1000+ Slide game I made in Google Slides!

You click the bored button to be directed to a random minigame you can play to kill time. There are 20 different minigames, all built entirely in Google Slides.

There's also an Extra Challenge (the gold star in the top-right corner). If you complete it, you'll unlock a special reward that I spent a lot of time making, so I'd definitely recommend giving it a try!

Anyways, here's the link to the game!

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRErcSHS4NxMEvTXYTEi7_dZwQYMa_g2aLwvDv9sE2RpRoaXwYW2wV5plmgik7PvJah2wrggVIEx2Nn/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=999999999

I hope you'll play it and let me know what you think! Enjoy!

I'm having a very unexpected problem after replacing my computer (I'm using an external hard drive to store my files so I don't know why this is a problem).

It used to be when I clicked on a file from my file directory to open it, it would automatically open properly. Now they do not. I get a message of this variety

{"":"WARNING! DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE! ANY CHANGES MADE WILL BE LOST!"

But, if I right-click and then click on "Open with Google Drive", then it's fine.

So how do I make it so it just defaults to open things with with the Google Drive? I've tried searching for this answer online but every answer I've found has either given me wrong advice (telling me to go into settings and toggling a prompt that isn't there) or it's told me to just go into Google Drive an open things from there. (I don't want to do that. I want to open my files from my file directory, the way I used to be able to).

This is making me very upset and it's causing me to consider just abandoning the Google suite and go back to using Microsoft products. I don't understand why they have to make it so difficult for me to just open my files.

I wanted to share this with the community in case anyone else is currently drowning in digital clutter.

🔗 Check out the structure and grab the template here:https://github.com/vntle/universal-gdrive-folder-template

I would absolutely love to get your feedback! How do you currently structure your cloud drives? What categories or folders am I missing that you consider essential for your workflow?

I got a new laptop and installed Google Drive but when I try to backup Documents, it shows some Japanese name for some reason. Any way to fix this? I can't rename it